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The Source of Melvilles Iroquois Proverb

Peter Unseth
To cite this article: Peter Unseth (2015) The Source of Melvilles Iroquois Proverb, ANQ: A
Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 28:3-4, 182-185
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2016.1172954

Published online: 16 May 2015.

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Date: 16 May 2016, At: 18:31

ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews,

Vol. 28, No. 34, 182185, 2015
Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0895-769X print / 1940-3364 online
DOI: 10.1080/0895769X.2016.1172954

P ETER U NSETH
Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, Dallas, Texas

Downloaded by [Dr Pete Unseth] at 18:31 16 May 2016

The Source of Melvilles Iroquois Proverb

Melvilles use of proverbs in his writing has been widely noted (e.g., Babcock on nautical
proverbs and other sayings, Hayes on proverbs generally, Laufer on a specific proverb). However,
previous proverb studies have not paid attention to a proverb that Melville credited to the Iroquois,
and I have found no discussion of the actual source of this proverb.1 This study examines two clusters
of evidence related to the source of this proverb and proposes a source for this ostensible Iroquois
proverb.
In his book of poems about the Civil War, Battle-Pieces, Melville included his poem Apathy
and Enthusiasm which spoke of different viewpoints toward fighting the war. In this poem, Melville
quotes what he identifies as a forest proverb, The Iroquois old saw:
But the elders with foreboding
Mourned the days forever oer,
And recalled the forest proverb,
The Iroquois old saw:
Grief to every graybeard
When young Indians lead the war.
Those writing about this poem seem to have taken its Iroquois identity at face value (e.g. Day;
Dryden; Huston; Milder; Montague; Rollyson, Paddock and Gentry; Strauss; Warren). Frank Day
concludes, Melville probably got the idea for this poem from a New York Times editorial of
April 16, 1861, titled The Resurrection of Patriotism . . . [However] The sentiments of the second stanza, with its conclusion, Grief to every graybeard /When young Indians lead the war, owe
nothing to the Times editorial (4). This emotional creativity in the second stanza of the poem is
Melvilles, but where did the proverb come from?
I have found no trace of this proverb outside of Melvilles poem, neither in English tradition nor
in Native American traditions. Its identification as being from the Iroquois is automatically highly
suspect. We find very little evidence of proverbs from any Native American languages. They are so
rare that Wolfgang Mieder (1989) once even offered a cash prize for a good manuscript documenting
proverbs from a Native American languagethere was no winner. Mieders two-volume bibliography of proverb studies lists nothing under Iroquois (2009), nor does his bibliography of proverb
collections cite anything from Iroquois (2011). I failed to find anything like this saying in Zonas
collection of Native American proverbs.2
I have searched in multiple collections of English proverbs and found no evidence of this
proverb. I have not found this proverb cited anywhere except in relation to Melvilles poem. If it

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The Source of Melvilles Iroquois Proverb

183

were indeed a forest proverb, The Iroquois old saw, we would expect to find some record of it in
addition to Melvilles quotation.
The use of the word graybeard in the saying also raises questions. The Iroquois were essentially beardless. However, it is possible, if it were indeed a genuine Iroquois saying, that in Melvilles
quotation, the translator (likely not Melville himself) used the term graybeard simply to mean old
man. It is not irrelevant that the word graybeard has a strong stress on the first syllable, fitting the
meter of the couplet; Melville was a poet, not merely a novelist.
We see then that there is no corroborating evidence that the saying is actually from the Iroquois
(nor any other Native American group), nor is the proverb cited by any source except Melville.
We now turn to the significant evidence of Melvilles practice of proverb creation in his fictional prose. In his books about Polynesia, Melville created two sayings he labeled specifically as
proverbs and put them into the mouths of characters from the semi-fictional Pacific societies that
he described. He made some up. And why not? An imaginary voyage deserves imaginary proverbs
(Hayes 30). In his novel Mardi, a character named Babbalanja quotes the old proverb Strike me
in the face, but refuse not my yams (Mardi 573). Also from Mardi, Throughout the Archipelago
this saying was a proverb You are lodged like the king in Willamilla (Mardi 231). This was not
a trivial statement, To be lodged like a king in Willamilla means to live in luxury, but at another
level it means to be a prisoner for life (Hayes 30).
In addition to these two sayings labeled as proverbs, he also referred to a proverb being spoken
without actually giving the exact form of it: I clearly comprehended Kory-Kory. But there was a
singular expression he made use of at the time, enforced by as singular a gesture, the meaning of
which I would have given much to penetrate. I am inclined to believe it must have been a proverb he
uttered (Typee 173).
Also, Melville put other sayings into the mouths of his Polynesian characters that were not
specifically labeled as proverbs but that sound very proverb-like. For example, the sagacious
Babbalanja reassures an upset king, Fierce flames are ever brief (Mardi 499); note the repeated
instances of <r>and <f>, consonant repetition being common in proverbs.
We see then that Melville is known to have created proverbs and to have ascribed them to
exotic cultures. And we have previously seen evidence that the putative Iroquois proverb cannot
be traced to the Iroquoisnor, indeed, to any other attested source.
This leads to an answer to the question of the source of the proverb: the origin of this saying
is not among the Iroquois but is a creation of Melville himself. For literary reasons, he ascribed it
to the Iroquois. As he had done earlier when describing cultures in the South Pacific, Melville here
invented a proverb and ascribed it to a culture that Americans were aware of but not familiar with.
I assume that Melville wanted to give the sentiment in his poem more gravity by citing it as a
proverb, rather than simply expressing the idea in his voice as a poet. For the purposes of this poem,
he chose to attribute it to the Iroquois (in the public mind seen as warriors) from Americas north.
In this poem regarding Northerners feelings about advancing the Civil War, Melville the poet chose
to attribute this proverb to a trisyllabically named northern tribe, not a trisyllabic southern tribe,
such as the Cherokee. Also, it is likely that his readers could rhyme Iroquois with saw.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Melville acknowledged the Native Americans as being
equal in human value to European-descended Americans: We are all of usAnglo-Saxons, Dyaks,
and Indianssprung from one head, and made in one image. And if we regret this brotherhood now,
we shall be forced to join hands hereafter . . . Let us not disdain them . . . And wherever we recognize
the image of God, let us reverence it (Mr. Parkmans Tour 291). Clearly, he harbored a positive
attitude toward the Native Americans, Iroquois, and others. By populating his early fictional realms

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with other textual sources that he celebrated as ethnic, Melville cultivated such difference as a literary
resource. Laying claim to the ethnic enabled Melville to assault the ethnocentrism of his readers
(Marr 7). In ascribing his proverb to the Iroquois, Melville was crediting this ethnically distinct
group with wisdom and restraint. And he also found an appropriate source to credit his created
proverb.
Elizabeth Renker has recently provided a complementary analysis of the source of Melvilles
old forest proverb (141). In her analysis, Melville marked the opposition to soldierly zeal as
Indian. That is, the idea of an other voice here, figured as the Indian proverb, is a racial marker
for the poems idea of a counter-hegemonic discourse. My reasoning took a different route, but we
both have reached the same conclusion: Melville himself created this proverb and credited it to the
Iroquois.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Elizabeth Unseth and Quincy Unseth for help with my writing style, especially
related to organizing my thoughts.
Notes
1 Since

this manuscript was submitted, I have discovered Renkers recent work, which is discussed at the end of this

article.
2 Zonas book contains a variety of sayings that he attributes to different Native American tribes. Whether they are all
truly proverbs and whether they have all truly been in use among North Americans, it is only important to note that the book
did not include any saying even faintly resembling Melvilles forest proverb of the Iroquois.

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Dryden, Edgar A. Monumental Melville: The Formation of a Literary Career. Stanford UP, 2004. Print.
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